Monday, 11 May 2015

Three Renault powered cars in the top ten in Spain

Renault Sport F1 saw three of their cars finish in the top
ten at the Spanish Grand Prix over the weekend. Infiniti Red Bull Racing’s
Daniel Ricciardo finished the race as the highest placed Renault powered car as
the Australian came home in seventh place which was a great result when you
consider that he suffered a catastrophic power unit failure right at the end of
the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Scuderia Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz put in another strong
performance ending the race in 9th place in front of his home crowd,
although like team mate he would have hoped for more following a fantastic
qualifying session Saturday.

Infiniti Red Bull Racing’s Daniil Kvyat finished the race by
rounding out the top ten. The Russian ended the race one lap down on winner
Nico Rosberg.

Meanwhile, Max Verstappen finished the race in eleventh
place just outside the points having qualified in 6th place
alongside his team mate Carlos Sainz.

For Renault, the Spanish Grand Prix was all about sorting
out the reliability of their power unit and they can be satisfied with getting
all of the cars to end of the race without any failures. They also did a good
job over the course of the weekend but still have work to do to catch Mercedes
and Ferrari.

‘This weekend we achieved our minimum aim of
finishing the Grand Prix with all four cars. We were less conservative in
qualifying and showed that the potential is still there, but we took a safe
approach in the race. We now need to maintain this platform and build on it for
the next races. In parallel we are aware we need to raise our game in
performance but we need to do this without taking any risks with the
reliability.’

‘Everyone at Viry has worked hard to recover
from the disappointment of the first four races. We needed to eliminate the
issues we saw and get reliability under control before we could introduce any
new specification parts. We had to limit mileage in some cases until we had all
the necessary information, which is never ideal, but sometimes you have to take
a short term hit for long term gain. All four cars crossed the line so we are
more or less back on an level footing with reliability, and can now look to
bring a bit more performance for the next races.’

Renault’s attention now switches to the opening 2 day
in-season test of the season which gets underway at the Circuit Barcelona de
Catalunya tomorrow.